Chapter 8

KENSINGTON

But we must not forget that we are travelling to Brentford sixty-two years ago. Let us, therefore, whip up the horses, and, passing the first milestone at the corner of the lane which a future generation to that of 1837 is to know by the name of the Exhibition Road, hurry on to Kensington.
Image unavailable: TOMMY ATKINS, 1838.
TOMMY ATKINS, 1838.

Kensington in this year of the accession of Her Majesty Queen Victoria is having an unusual amount of attention paid to it. Every one is bursting with loyalty towards the girl of eighteen suddenly called upon to rule over the nation, and crowds throng the old-fashioned High Street of Kensington at the end by Palace Green, eager to see Her Majesty drive forth from Kensington Palace. They are kept at a respectful distance by a sentry in a dress which succeeding generations will think absurd. White trousers, coatee, stiff stock, rigid cross-belts, and a shako like the upper part of the funnel of a penny steamer were whimsical things to go a-soldiering in, but the Tommy Atkins of that time had no other or easier kind of uniform, and it will be left for the Crimean War, seventeen years later, to prove the folly of it.

The palace is well guarded, for the Government, for their part, have not yet learned to trust the{54} people; nor, indeed, are the people at this time altogether to be trusted. The long era of the Georges did not breed loyalty, and for William the Fourth, just dead, the people had an amused contempt. They called him ‘Silly Billy.’ At this time, also, aristocracy drew its skirts daintily from any possible contact with the lower herd. Alas! poor lower herd, and still more, alas! for aristocracy.
Image unavailable: OLD KENSINGTON CHURCH.
OLD KENSINGTON CHURCH.
REMINISCENCES

Our fellow-traveller in the Brentford stage has a friend with him, and, as we jolt from Kensington Gore into the High Street, points out the palace, and tells how William the Third and Queen Mary lived and died there, amid William’s stolid Hollanders. He tells a story which he heard from his grandfather, of how Dr. Radcliffe, called in to look at the King’s dropsical ankles, said, when asked what he thought of them, ‘Why, truly, I would not{55} have your Majesty’s two legs for your three kingdoms.’ He tells the friend that the King procured a more courtly and less blunt medical adviser; and we can well believe it. More stories beguile the way: how Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark ended here in the fulness of time; how their successor, George the First, furious with Sir Robert Walpole, with his queen, with the servants, and anything and everything, used to tear off his wig and jump on it, in transports of rage. How he would gaze up at the vane on the clock-tower entrance to the palace (which we can just glimpse as we pass), anxious for favouring winds to waft his ships to England with despatches from his beloved Hanover, and how he died suddenly at breakfast one morning after being disappointed in those breezes.

These are hearsay stories. Our friend, however, has reminiscences of his own, and can recollect the Princess Caroline, the eccentric wife of the Prince Regent, living at the palace between the years 1810 and 1814—‘a red-faced huzzy, sir, with yellow towzled hair, all spangles and scarlet cloak, like a play-actress, making Haroun-al-Raschid visits among the people, and bothering the house-agents in the neighbourhood for houses to let.’ The old gentleman who says this is a Radical, and, like all of that political creed, likes to see Royalty ‘behaving as sich, and not like common people such as you an’ me.’ Whereupon another passenger in the stage, on whom the speaker’s eye has fallen, audibly objects to being called, or thought, or included among common persons; so that relations{56} among the ‘insides’ are strained, and so continue, past Kensington Church, a very decrepit and nondescript kind of building; past the Charity School, the Vestry Hall, where a gorgeous beadle in plush breeches, white stockings, scarlet cloak trimmed with gold bullion, a wonderful hat, and a wand of office, is standing, and so into the country. Presently we come to the village of Hammersmith, innocent as yet of whelk-stalls and fried-fish shops, and so at last, past Turnham Green, to Brentford.